Wednesday, December 29, 2010

Atheists and agnostics, Jews and Mormons are among the highest-scoring groups on a new survey of religious knowledge, outperforming evangelical Protestants, mainline Protestants and Catholics on questions about the core teachings, history and leading figures of major world religions.

The three core tragedies associated with Christianity's early break from Judaism are: 1. Christianity's resultant other-worldliness, 2. Christianity's difficulty to access the person they follow and worship, and get a clearer sense and understanding of what this particular Israeli was trying to explain and demonstrate, and 3. The mismatch to have a religion with such influence in world affairs itself be so deeply other-worldly in its core worldview.

This disconnect, and this "half-ness" was strongly evident in the Christmas sermons of two of the most powerful religious leaders in the world today, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, head of the Church of England, and Pope Benedict XVI, head of the Roman Catholic Church.

The enduring breach between Judaism and Christianity cripples the voice of spiritual guidance needed in our time.

Saturday, December 25, 2010

Still, Christmas was marked by a rare spirit of cooperation between Israel and the Palestinian Authority. Israeli officials say about 100,000 tourists visited Bethlehem on the holiday, twice as many as last year. A lull in violence brought the biggest turnout in a decade, and it was a peaceful Christmas in the Holy Land.

Saturday, December 4, 2010

New York - On November 28, 2010, Julian Assange, editor in chief of Wikileaks (founded 2006) released 251,287 US diplomatic cables including many labeled classified or secret.

US diplomats stand trial for their foibles, their faux pas, their candor, and their arrogance. But to revel and delight in this, and to wag a soiled finger in 'there-theres' during America's embarrassing moment is short-sighted, ill-advised, and plain wrong.

There is nothing new or to be learned that such communications are the fabric of international, political relations dominated as they are by unvarnished, national self interest?

If friends and foes are in the mood to lecture the United States, it need not be in the shallow pretense of shock that diplomacy is as everyone already knows it is, but rather it should be for what should evoke genuine anger, namely that the US has proven so lax, disordered, and inept in its capacity to protect sensitive materials.

Will this dump help a single everyman who is affected and oppressed by the closedness of systems and structures in which we try to carry out our daily lives? No, not in the least. In fact Assange has just made matters worse in this regard

The negatively inspired exposure and pointless embarrassment of US diplomats has drained from our world another drop of the single most needed quality in all constructive relationships, trust